


Hearth

by wenwen



Series: Home [1]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (Comics), The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Child Soldiers, Dysfunctional Family, Everyone Has Issues, Everyone makes questionable life choices, Family Bonding, Five shows up later in the series, Fix-It, Nobody deals with them in a healthy way, Protective Siblings, Sibling Bonding, kind of, mentions of Number Five
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-16
Updated: 2019-04-16
Packaged: 2020-01-14 22:43:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18485941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wenwen/pseuds/wenwen
Summary: It's 3 A.M. and Diego's tossing knives at the wall of the coffee shop at the corner of Ninth and Broadway.Vanya, a thin fleece blanket wrapped around her shoulders, watches from across the street and shivers.





	Hearth

**Author's Note:**

> Me starting this fic: hey maybe I'll write a oneshot under 5k words for once  
> Hearth: *is 8k+ words, part 1 of 7*  
> Me:  
> Hearth: lol you thought

It's 3 A.M. and Diego's tossing knives at the wall of the coffee shop at the corner of Ninth and Broadway.

Vanya, a thin fleece blanket wrapped around her shoulders, watches from across the street and shivers.  She's not particularly good at anything, not even staying out of sight, so she's not surprised when he turns and sees her standing just outside the circle of light cast by a lamppost.  He yanks his knives from the mortar and slides them back into their holsters, then crosses the street with quick steps. He doesn’t look before he steps into the street. It wouldn't matter, anyways -- this late, the city is quiet.  "What are you doing here?" he asks gruffly when he reaches her, and the bite of frustration and annoyance isn't for her but she shrinks back nonetheless.

"I -- I was just -- " she fumbles the words and gestures uselessly with her hands as if that will somehow convey the unnameable impulse that drove her to follow him when he snuck out of the Academy.

"It's dangerous, coming out this late by yourself," Diego says, cutting her off.  He reaches over automatically to tug the blanket up where it started to slip off her shoulder.  "Why didn't you wear a jacket?"

Vanya outgrew her jacket last year.  She doesn't say anything, just like she never brought it up to their father or Mom.  Vanya usually has no reason to leave the Academy anyways; what would she need a jacket for?

"Come on," says Diego before the silence stretches too long.  "Mom'll worry if she catches us sneaking back in." There's a stiffness in his shoulders as she follows him along the cracked pavement, illuminated sporadically by the dim yellow glow of the lampposts.  It's a stiffness Vanya will never understand, no matter how much she wants to go with her siblings on their missions -- the weight of lives and the world itself on those shoulders.

Diego came out to throw knives for the same reason Ben's locked himself in the bathroom with the shower on full blast and Luther's pounding out laps around the Academy grounds and Allison's listening to music with the volume of her headphones turned all the way up and Klaus is ---

So Vanya doesn't think it's jealousy when she asks, quietly, “Aren't you tired of it?”

A muscle jumps in Diego's jaw.  Vanya knows he would never hurt her, but has to suppress a flinch nonetheless.  “It's late,” he says instead. “We're all tired.”

 

Breakfast is, as always, oatmeal.  Vanya thinks, vaguely, that she might have hated oatmeal as a little girl, but she doesn't think much of it now.  It's tasteless. It doesn't make her feel much of anything anymore.

“Eat up, everyone, you have a big, big day ahead of you,” Mom says serenely as she glides around the table.  

Their father is absent today, working on something important in his study; he never misses dinner, but does breakfast alone sometimes.  There’s an atmosphere of both disappointment and relief hanging above the table, but even without his presence, no one dares speak.

Diego is playing restlessly with a butterfly knife under the table.  Mom stops behind his chair and rests a hand on his shoulder as he freezes.  “Now, Diego, you know the rules,” she admonishes. “The only knives allowed at the dining table are knives for dining!”

Diego ducks his head.  Luther drags himself from his obvious exhaustion to raise a self-righteous eyebrow at him from across the table, and the chastised expression on Diego's face quickly morphs into a murderous scowl.  Fortunately for everyone present, his legs are still too short to be able to kick Luther under the table, and Diego won't start a food fight with Mom right there.

Klaus is staring vacantly at the far wall as he spoons oatmeal mechanically into his mouth.  The oatmeal doesn't always make it to his mouth. The spoon doesn't always make it back to the bowl.  His eyes are wide and bloodshot.

So are Ben's.  But Ben doesn't sleep much, anyways.  Sometimes he brings a sketchbook to the breakfast table, but today, he just pushes his oatmeal around his bowl listlessly.  Mom sets a glass of orange juice at his elbow, but that too goes untouched.

Allison has one eye on her food and the other on the magazine in her lap, flipping through the pages absently as she eats.  Of the five who went on the mission yesterday, she looks the most put together. Her hair is clean and styled, her nail polish smooth and unchipped.  That's nothing new. Vanya envies that of her -- if she wasn't her sister, she'd say Allison was living a charmed life.

The illusion is shattered as the clock ticks to eight o'clock.  

“Run along now,” Mom says brightly, pivoting neatly on her heel.  “Your morning lessons are waiting for you.”

Luther stands first, empty bowl in one hand and glass in the other.  Vanya takes the last tasteless mouthful and follows suit as her siblings collect their dishes around her.

There's combat training, but Vanya isn't going into combat.  She jogs on the treadmill instead as her siblings take turns throwing each other into the mats.  Sometimes, if they need an extra body for practicing during lessons, she'll get to stand with them and let Ben, who's closest to her height, try an armbar or chokehold on her.  Today isn't one of those days, so she watches from under her eyelashes and tries to memorize what the techniques look like, just in case.

 

In the books Vanya reads, families and siblings always seem close.  She wonders if hers are not because they don't actually share any blood or because their father has been training most of them to stop the apocalypse.

There's a movie afternoon today -- between noon and 12:30, since it's a Sunday, and Luther had decided months ago that they should do something fun together  _as a family._  Diego had protested this appropriation of their only sanctioned independent time fiercely and the eventual compromise, decided with bruises and a little drawn blood that Vanya patched up with iodine and bandaids, was sibling movies every other week.  Today's movie is the second thirty minutes of a film called  _The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe._  Diego has already tried to stab Luther once over his comparison of Diego to the character Edmund, who the six siblings had in a rare moment of unity more or less unanimously declared  _a whiny little brat._  

“If he’s anyone, it's Klaus,” he'd spat, to which Klaus slurred, “Heeey!” in offense.  Klaus had slunk into movie day five minutes late, having spent that time sniffing bleach in the supply closet.

Vanya doesn't think she was meant to be included in this  _family activity_ but Klaus, the first time Luther had literally dragged him kicking and screaming from the attic, had complained,  _Number Seven doesn't have to do this,_ to which Luther has responded,  _yes, she does_ and retrieved her from her rendition of Vitali's  _Chaconne._  

Today, Vanya huddles in her blanket next to Ben, who ignores her only in the same way he ignores all their siblings.  It's kind of reassuring, and anyways only needs to happen for another twenty-five minutes.

Klaus has started borrowing Allison's eyeliner and his tie is looped around his head like a sweatband.  Perched on the arm of the sofa with bare feet tucked under him like a hulking bird, he says, “I don't get why we have to watch this one.  We don't  _really_ have to keep  _stroking_ Luther's ego, do we?”  It rolls off his tongue languidly in the way it does when he's bored and the proffered entertainment isn't as interesting as the one he could create by instigating another fight between Diego and Luther.

On cue, Diego demands, “What's that supposed to mean?  Klaus?”

Allison rolls her eyes.

Whenever Diego and Luther clash, Allison usually backs Luther, and Klaus is -- nominally -- on Diego's side because Diego will let him sneak out with him some nights since Klaus will get hopelessly lost if he goes out by himself and also doesn't know how to sneak back in without getting caught.  Number Five, before he jumped through time and lost his way back, and Ben with him, heckled one side or the other the way vultures might hover over a carcass disputed by a bear and a wolf. Without Number Five, Ben spectates disinterestedly next to Vanya, twirling a pen absently in one hand.

“It's just a movie -- ” Luther defends staunchly, even as Klaus practically purrs, “He thinks he's Peter, of course, which makes Allison Susan and you Edmund and me Lucy, and Ben and Vanya as, I don't know, the beavers -- ”

Diego's knives come out.  Ben sighs heavily and pulls Vanya around the corner of the couch with him.

They don't finish the movie.

 

It's 9 P.M. and the wailing whoop of the siren goes off.  Vanya hunches on the edge of her bed and plucks out the second movement of Vivaldi’s  _Spring,_ over and over as her siblings run up and down the hallway.

“Ben!” Diego roars, struggling into his holsters.  “Have you seen my -- oh, never mind!”

Ben flashes finger guns at him from Vanya's doorway, his own domino mask already over his eyes as he heads for the stairs.

“Children!”  Their father's voice snaps over them all and brings Klaus careening out of his room, struggling with his tie.  “Chop, chop! You must answer the call to a mission promptly!”

Mom stops Klaus with both hands on his shoulders and a gentle laugh, untangling his tie and knotting it precisely.  “Thanks, Mom,” he says breathlessly, and bolts after Ben.

Mom watches him go with a fond, dreamy smile, then pivots neatly into Vanya's doorway to let Luther and Allison thunder past.  They rattle down the stairs, the front door slams, and suddenly the house is silent.

Vanya picks halfheartedly at the violin, her bow dangling unused from her fingers.  Her fingers slip, and the resulting chord jangles discordantly.

Mom props a hand on her hip and says, “Well, it looks like someone could use a pick-me-up to put a pep in her step!”

Vanya feels a slow smile creeping onto her face.  “Yeah,” she says. “Yeah, Mom, I could.”

Curfew is normally at half past nine, now that Vanya and her siblings are fifteen.  That had been their birthday present from Mom. When they had turned fourteen, she gave them their names.  There is only fifteen minutes until curfew, but sometimes, when her siblings are out late on missions, Mom will let Vanya sit up with her as she embroiders.

Mom hums under her breath as Vanya trails her down to the kitchen.  She settles in her chair and just watches as Mom bustles around, heating milk on the stove for hot chocolate.  The sky is dark so the curtains are drawn. There's a book lying discarded on the table. It's Ben's, probably dropped when the siren went off.  Vanya picks it up.  _Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way..._

“Here's a little something sweet, darling, bon appetit,” Mom singsongs, setting a tea tray down in front of Vanya.

Vanya startles out of the novel and smiles when she sees the little row of biscuits lined up neatly alongside the mug of hot cocoa.  “Thanks, Mom,” she says gratefully, setting the book aside.

Mom smiles indulgently and produces her cross stitching.  “Why don't we go upstairs?” she suggests. “I think it'd be just fine to have biscuits and cocoa in an armchair, don't you?”

Sometime between her first and second biscuits, it starts to rain.  The droplets tinkle against the distant window panes, and Vanya shivers a little, more at the thought of the cold than the temperature itself.

Mom starts humming as she works, poking the needle in and out of the fabric in her frame.   _“Rain, rain: go away.  Come again another day.  Rain, rain: go away.”_

This is the third mission in the same week.  Vanya wonders how brittle her siblings will be when they return tonight.  Surely not as fragile as her, with her delicate glass exterior with its cracks spiderwebbed all along its surface.  No, they're made of sterner stuff than her, her brothers and sister.

Past midnight, the front door swings open and their father strides in briskly.  “To bed, all of you,” he orders imperiously to the children straggling in behind him.  “We will discuss this mission tomorrow.” He clicks away in his wingtips and leaves her siblings in his wake with the clear dismissal.  

Luther is in first after him, his carefully combed hair mussed and flecked with rust-red.   Allison too looks a little wild, her hair pulling free of their braids and the top buttons on her shirt undone.

Klaus is leaning on Diego, or more accurately, Diego is half-dragging Klaus through the door, since Klaus either cannot or will not move his legs properly.  Klaus’ eyes are wild and a little vacant, and even though Diego’s shirt is lightly splattered in mud, Klaus’ collar is severely rumpled, as if he had been shaken by the neck.  Diego appears to accept his role as makeshift crutch with grim resignation as Klaus clutches at his arm with a deathly grip.

Ben is absolutely covered in blood, his shoulders hunched inward as he slinks through the door last.  

“Oh, dear,” Mom says arily.  “That boy just runs those uniforms ragged, doesn't he?”

Vanya glances at her sideways, but she gives Vanya a distant smile and says, “Run along to bed now, Vanya.  Little girls need lots of sleep to grow up big and strong. I'll walk with you.”

“Mom,” Vanya says when they reach her bedroom.  “Thank you.” For hot cocoa, for the company, for the reassurance.

Mom raises her hand from where it had been resting on Vanya's shoulder to brush her face gently.  “Sweet dreams, dear girl,  _zvezda moya,”_ she says.  “The sun will come up tomorrow.”

 

It's 2 A.M. and Vanya hears the pad of quiet footsteps from the hallway.  She shuffles out of bed and into the hall and watches from the upstairs landing as Diego slips out into the night and eases the front door shut behind him.  Vanya heads back into her room for a blanket. She thinks she might ask Mom about a new jacket after all.

By the time she catches up to him, Diego is leaning against the wall of the coffee shop, his eyes half closed and head tilted all the way back to rest against the brick.  He flicks a knife out of his hand, and it boomerangs back to thud into the wall next to his head. This time he lets her come to him before saying,  _“What,_ Vanya?”

Yesterday, Vanya said nothing.  Tonight, she says, “Let's watch a movie.”

Diego pauses mid-throw.  He eyes her incredulously.  “What?”

Vanya twists the corner of her blanket in her hands.  “A movie,” she repeats.

Diego squints.  “Now?”

Vanya feels her shoulders curling back in instinctively.  She shrugs.

Diego stares at her curiously for a long moment.  Then he snicks his knife back into its holster. “As long as it’s not that dumbass lion-witch movie,” he says, and pushes off against the wall.  “Come on,” he says. “We should get Klaus.”

Klaus needs to be retrieved because Diego had deposited him at the diner with a couple of dollars to buy himself a milkshake.  Where either of her brothers got the money, Vanya doesn’t know, and she’s afraid to ask. It's less destructive if he's out here instead of left to his own devices at the Academy, with the diner's bright lights and jazzy background music and the sleepy waitresses hovering just a few tables away.

Klaus, when Diego and Vanya slide into his booth, blinks owlishly at Vanya and says, languidly, “Hey, sis.”  He swishes his straw around his milkshake indolently and leans forward to take a long, loud slurp. It’s a show entirely for her benefit; the milkshake is barely touched, the whipped topping half melted and with a hint of amber.  

Diego says, “Christ, did you put bourbon in that?”

Klaus tips his head and smiles a little too loosely.  “Dad won’t miss it,” he says reassuringly.

Diego makes a disparaging noise.  “Get up,” he says harshly, dragging Klaus out of the booth by his arm.

“Nooo!”  Klaus grabs at his spiked milkshake with a sad moan.  “I paid for that!”

“You ruined a perfectly good milkshake, is what you did,” Diego growls.  “Quit putting that crap in your body, bro.”

“I need it!” Klaus insists, at which point Diego gets him in a chokehold so he has no choice but to stagger out of the diner with Diego.  Vanya trails behind them.

It takes a couple blocks for Klaus to give up, going limp so Diego lets him go.  “Nobody asked if  _I_ was ready to go home,” he sulks, and the stumble in his step is mostly fake.

“We're watching a movie,” says Diego, clipped.

Klaus perks up.  “Oh, a movie,” he says.  “Are there going to be snacks?  Drinks, maybe?”

Vanya wonders if, by  _drinks,_ Klaus means water or juice or alcohol or bleach.  Diego must think the same, because he grabs Klaus by back of the collar preemptively when their brother skips ahead in the direction of a corner convenience store.  “You're staying with me,” he says over Klaus’ yelp and lets him go immediately. “Got it?”

Klaus scuttles backwards so he can eye Diego mistrustfully, then rolls his eyes and heaves a resigned sigh.  “Oh, fine,” he says. “It's going to be boring anyways, who cares if we're hungry or thirsty?”

Diego doesn't take them back in the front door.  “Pogo's probably in the foyer,” he explains, weaving through the topiary in the side yard.  He leans around the corner to peek into one of the wide bay windows and cranes his head to make sure no one’s upstairs before jimmying it open with the flat of his knife.  He swings himself up on the sill and takes his shoes off before hopping down lightly into the dining. “Come on,” he says, and offers Vanya a hand to haul her up.

She scrabbles up gracelessly, nearly tipping on her face before Diego grabs her shoulder to steady her.  “Thanks,” she mutters, and he lets her go. He turns to help Klaus, and she hesitates too long, wondering if she should offer to help.  Diego swings Klaus up himself with a grunt. Vanya is the smallest and physically the weakest; she wouldn’t have been much help anyways, but still she can’t help feeling inconsiderate.

“Klaus,” says Diego, and visibly hesitates before saying, “If you wanna snack, grab some food and drinks.   _No alcohol,”_ he adds when Klaus lights up.

“No promises,” Klaus says with relish, and trots off as Diego makes another grab for his collar and misses.  

Diego growls a little under his breath, but betrays his nervousness with a glance over his shoulder for Pogo or Mom or their father.  “Anything else we need?” he asks Vanya.

Vanya thinks of watching with just Klaus and Diego and wonders if they will actually watch the movie, or if Diego will passive-aggressively mother Klaus the entire night like a determined sheepdog with a particularly wayward sheep.  “Maybe -- maybe Ben?” she suggests hesitantly. Ben’s a good buffer.

Diego blinks but says, “Sure.  Ben. My room.” He pauses, then pats her on the shoulder with forced casualness and slinks off towards the stairs.

Vanya goes up the stairs too, only more slowly and cautiously because none of them -- particularly not her -- can mimic Diego’s catlike ability to sneak around the house.

There’s a dim light filtering out of the crack beneath the bathroom door, but Vanya doesn’t hear the shower running.  She taps on the door with just her fingernail, because she doesn’t dare try anything louder. Ben, when he opens the door a crack, lets a cloud of steam billow out before him.  His skin is scalded pink, he’s wrapped head to toe in a fluffy towel, and he looks absolutely miserable. “Um,” he says.

Vanya self-consciously remembers that none of the siblings ever bother each other during their post-mission rituals.  She rocks a little on her feet indecisively, but she’s already here. Vanya points her thumb over her shoulder. “We’re watching a movie,” she says.  “Diego’s room.”

“Uh.  Okay,” says Ben.  “Sounds great. Give me a sec.”  He closes the door.

Vanya chews her lip and debates waiting for him.  That would be awkward, wouldn’t it? She takes a couple of steps towards Diego’s room.  But Ben asked her to ‘give him a sec.’ She hesitates. Ben knows it’s in Diego’s room, Vanya told him.  She walks quickly the rest of the way to Diego’s room before she can change her mind again.

Klaus has pilfered the unhealthiest junk food in the house -- salted corn chips, squares of dark chocolate, and a bowl of cheese cubes.  It fills a small collection of bowls in the middle of Diego’s floor.

“Klaus -- wow,” says Vanya, her eyes widening.  “This is a lot.”

“Thank me all you want,” Klaus purrs smugly, popping a piece of chocolate into his mouth.

Diego is hunched over a small television that Vanya is also afraid to ask how he got.  Its screen is not even a foot across, and even with the volume turned low it emits a loud buzz when Diego jabs laboriously at the buttons.  “Okay,” he says. “I think I got it. Vanya, get the door. Where’s Ben?”

“What are you doing?”  demands Luther from the door.

“Um,” says Ben.

Klaus heaves a sigh and rolls his eyes, flopping onto his back.

Diego jackrabbits to his feet and shoulders his way into the hall in front of Ben so he can get in Luther’s face and growl, “None of your business.”

Luther looks over his head and says, “Ben?  What are you doing?”

“Watching a movie?” tries Ben.

“You know that’s against the rules,” says Luther, sounding almost disappointed as he glances into the room and sees Klaus and Vanya.  “Really? You too?”

Diego juts his chin out combatively and says, “Yeah?  You were sneaking around past curfew too,  _Number_   _One.”_

It shouldn't be a good argument.  Luther's post-midnight laps in the Academy are nothing like Diego's escapades to hurl blades at other buildings and smuggle Klaus to local diners and occasionally buy a donut from a 24-hour corner store, but Luther stammers nonetheless, his face flushing pink.

“We’re watching the movie,” Diego says.  “Are you coming or not?”

 _“The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe,”_ Luther says immediately.  “I’ll get Allison. And the VHS.”

Diego snarls wordlessly.

They watch  _The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe._

“I take it back,” says Luther, as the end credits are scrolling up the screen.  “You're not Edmund, Diego.”

Number One admitting that he's wrong?  Vanya exchanges an incredulous glance with Ben.

“You feeling all right there, big guy?” Klaus asks doubtfully.  “Bad guy clock you a good one when we weren't looking? Dear old Dad drop you on your head one too many times as a baby?”

Luther frowns. “Edmund turned out okay.  You're definitely the witch’s angry dwarf minion.”   

Allison, still smelling faintly of cigarette smoke, rescues the nearly-empty bowls of snacks while Diego hurls a pillow at him.

 

Ben is Number Six because even though he has transdimensional demons beneath his skin, he is absolute garbage at hand to hand combat.  That’s according to Diego.  Vanya thinks Ben is actually pretty good.  Just not as good as Numbers One thru Three.  Or sometimes Four, when Klaus is bothered to try.  He's also the shortest, so even Klaus and Allison can knock him over without too much effort.

He is, however, the fastest, which means he’s always on Luther’s team during dodgeball because Luther and Diego can never be on the same team.  This also means that Allison is always on Diego’s team or the teams won’t be balanced since Klaus can’t throw, and they can’t play 3-on-2 because even Vanya is better than being down a player.  Their father only allows her to play because the others are on strict orders not to hit her hard, since she’s only ordinary.

They’re all a little sluggish today, since they stayed up watching the film -- save Ben, who twist flips out of the way of a ball hurled by Diego and exclaims gleefully, “Psych!”

Diego always gets fired up during dodgeball because most of his combat ability centers around being able to hit things, but Ben has a preternatural ability to dodge.  The ball hits the far wall hard and rolls back across the center line before Luther can grab it. Diego’s next throw veers sharply away from Ben and towards Vanya, who squeaks.  Luther hauls her bodily out of the way, and the ball just brushes the ends of her hair as she hits the ground on top of Luther.

As she scrambles back upright, Ben zips in to grab the ball and hurls it at Allison, who catches it as it slams against her chest.  She whirls and throws it in the same movement, and it glances off Luther’s leg before he can fully dodge.

“Point!” their father declares crisply from the balcony over the lawn as Mom smiles benignly behind his shoulder.  “The score is 14-14. Next point wins the match.”

The ball rolls to a stop at Klaus’ feet.  He gives it a very reluctant look, but their father is standing above them, so he picks it up.  “Haha,” he says under his breath, “here goes nothing.”

“C’mon, Klaus,” calls Ben, who is still hopping on the balls of his feet like an overexcited puppy.  “Hit me!”

Klaus squeezes his eyes as close to shut as he can while still having them open and chucks the ball in Ben’s general direction.  The ball makes a feeble arc and bounces somewhere between Vanya and Ben.

“Hey, that was better!” Ben cheers, completely sincerely, and some of the insecurity slides off of Klaus’ face.  Ben scoops up the ball and darts to the edge of the line, flinging it at back at Klaus. Klaus trips out of the way, but Allison, behind him, isn’t quite fast enough.  

Mom blows the whistle.  Its piercing shrill echoes over the lawn as Vanya stumbles to a halt.  Diego snags the ball as it bounces past.

“Match!” announces their father.  “You may have a ten minute break to rehydrate and use the restroom, after which you will proceed to independent study.  Except you, Number Six. You will have individual training. Dismissed!”

Ben’s smile falters fleetingly but noticeably before it returns.  “Okay, Dad,” he says.

Vanya wishes she could have individual training with their father too, but what could he teach her?  The others only train with him things they couldn’t learn from anyone else. She trails the others back indoors.  Mom has poured out six glasses of cool water in the kitchen, and Vanya takes the last one gratefully, struggling to control her breathing.  Her heart’s still pounding in her chest, and it reverberates in her skull.

“Luther!” Allison says, laughter in her voice.  She’s leaning up against the far counter. “You can’t just say that!”

“What?” Luther defends, but he’s hiding a smile.  “We pitch ‘em like baseballs, Ben bats them out of the air.”

“Ben doesn’t want to bat them out of the air,” counters Ben, nursing his water with tiny sips.  “Ben wants to stay home and read his books.”

“We're heroes,” Allison says, rolling her eyes.  “We can't just _let_ people rob banks or blow up state monuments.”

“It's a stupid idea,” Diego argues, spinning a knife over the knuckles of his free hand.  “You can't make them stayed balled up. Their arms and legs would flail out and everything.”

Vanya doesn't know how they can even be upright and laughing about this so casually.  She still feels like she's going to die, and she has to set her water down because her hand is shaking too much.  The only one in the same shape as her is Klaus, who's half sprawled on the floor with his water between his legs. His sweaty curls leave a patch of damp of the cabinets behind him as he stares blankly at the legs if the table.

“You're just saying that because you can't do it,” Luther says.  “Fine, I guess if you're too weak to toss one guy a couple of meters -- ”

“Fine,” Diego snaps right back, unable to resist the challenge.  “Next mission. We'll throw Ben the bad guys.”

“Ben doesn't want you to throw him the bad guys,” Ben complains, but he's Number Six, so Luther and Diego will get their way.   He sets his empty glass down in the sink. “Catch you later,” he says. It's never a good idea to keep their father waiting.

Vanya ends up on a couch in the study with her history textbook spread out over her lap, staring at the pages without seeing the words as she tries to figure out why she feels like she’s twitching inside her own skin.  Allison is on the couch adjacent, scribbling an essay on lined paper as she props her own textbook up on her knees.

She can see Klaus across the foyer in the dining room, his things spread out on the ornate dining table, because he likes to scribble on the surface of the redwood in ink and claim it was an accident.  Diego is probably in his room, far away from the rest of them because it’s harder for him to concentrate on his schoolwork around the others, and she knows she would be able to find Luther in one of the bedrooms converted into a classroom because he likes to do his work at an actual desk.  

Ben usually pingpongs around, sometimes sprawling upside down in an armchair next to Vanya and Allison, sometimes tapping his pencil on the table and needling Klaus to do his work, even lying quietly on Diego’s bed -- the only one Diego will tolerate to do so while he’s studying -- and sometimes in the desk one or two down from Luther.  But Ben isn’t around today, because he’s in the basement with their father, occasionally making the entire house tremble in its foundations.

Allison twirls her pen in her hand and asks, “What’s on your mind, Vanya?”

Vanya doesn’t quite know how to express her unease, so she shrugs and mumbles, “Just this, uh, Seneca Falls Convention in 1848,” and gestures at the pages of her textbook.  

Her sister lights up.  “With Elizabeth Cady Stanton!” Allison says, snapping her fingers.  “And Martha Coffin Wright! It was like, _the_ most badass move to get women’s rights in the spotlight.”

Vanya checks over her shoulder reflexively in case Mom is there to admonish Allison on her language.  “Yeah,” she says. “It’s pretty cool.” She gestures vaguely. “I just -- can’t remember all the dates and names and everything.”

Allison frowns sympathetically and leans in.  “If you want,” she offers conspiratorially. “I can rumor you into remembering.”

Vanya half-smiles.  “No, thanks,” she says.  Her fingers jitter on the pages again; automatically, she reaches into her pocket to shake out a couple of pills into her hand.  She swallows them dry, because it’s easier to carry around a bottle of pills than a glass of water.

“You should really drink water with that,” Allison says, eyeing her with concern.  Vanya shrugs, but Allison has already slid her textbook on the couch cushions next to her.  “Don’t move,” she says, before Vanya can tell her not to bother.

In the kitchen, Klaus says something to Allison, probably snarky, to which their sister rolls her eyes.  Vanya’s attention catches on Allison’s half-finished essay. Her handwriting is elegant, the loops of the letters gracefully curved.  Vanya’s is nothing like hers; Vanya’s is all messy scrawls and jerky angles.

“Here, Vanya,” says Allison, and passes her a glass of water over the back of the couch.  

“Thanks,” Vanya says, and returns her sister’s smile automatically.  The cold sends a shock down her throat as she swallows.

The floor rattles again, and the books thump threateningly on the shelves.  Vanya goes back to her textbook, and it’s a little easier now.

 

On Saturday, the siren goes off in the afternoon, calling Vanya’s siblings out of their arithmetic lesson and leaving Vanya sitting alone in the classroom.  She takes her time to pack up her things to take back up to her room. It’s a daytime mission, so her father will probably have a small press meeting after the mission as well.

She eats dinner alone in the kitchen instead of the dining room.  Mom makes her beef stroganoff over both mashed potatoes and fresh pasta.  She thinks it might be her favorite -- one of the few dishes that don’t just taste like ash in her mouth -- and it warms her all the way down as she swallows.  

“Mom?” says Vanya, stirring her potatoes into the extra gravy.  Mom turns, a warm smile on her face, and Vanya hesitates. Her potatoes and gravy turn into an even grey-brown sludge under her spoon.  “Why doesn’t Dad bring me on missions anymore?”

“Oh, Vanya,  _zvezda moya,”_ says Mom, giving her a sympathetic smile.  “All that blood and fighting -- you wouldn’t like it anyways.”

Vanya spoons her potatoes into her mouth, sets the spoon down in her empty bowl.  “Dad used to take me to watch,” she says in a small voice. “He used to let me help with the training.”

“Your father knows best,” says Mom, setting down a fresh mug of hot cocoa.  “You always liked the violin better anyways.”

That’s true -- when Vanya plays, she feels settled, as though she is safe in the knowledge that the violin will always be  _hers,_ the way Diego’s knives are his.  It doesn’t quite fill the pit that nags at her, telling her something is missing, but she is as close to complete as she’s ever gotten.  “Thanks, Mom,” says Vanya, lifting the mug. “I’m going to take this upstairs.”

She sets the hot cocoa on her bedside table and pulls the violin case from its safe spot under her bed.  It’s a beautiful instrument, even to Vanya’s eyes, though she hasn’t seen many other violins. She handles it reverently as she fixes on the shoulder rest, tucks it under her chin, and goes through the motions of tuning it.  It was the only thing their father had ever given her alone, the closest thing she had to the time he gave her brothers and sister, and sometimes Vanya just looked at it and felt a strange warmth curling in her chest.

She runs through scales first, then arpeggios, starting slow and picking up speed as she plays.  Her E minor arpeggio segues directly into the middle of Bach’s  _Violin Concerto No. 1 in A minor,_ and she lets the song carry her away.  

She plays something recent by Philip Glass, something old and dark and familiar by Tchaikovsky, and by the time the front doors open, her cocoa’s gone cold and her back aches from keeping the violin up.  

She sits on the floor and leans against her bed and plays  _Amazing Grace,_ gently, so she can hear her siblings troop upstairs above its notes.  Ben passes her door first, making a beeline for the bathroom. The door slams shut; seconds later, Allison rushes past, only to make a high, frustrated noise and pound twice on the bathroom door before giving up and storming back to her own room.

Luther’s door shuts firmly, and Diego’s and Klaus’ mirror seconds after.  Vanya’s left alone in the silence once again. She packs the violin away slowly and turns off the lights.  

 

It’s 1 A.M. and instead of tossing knives in a dark alley elsewhere in the city, Diego’s knocking on Vanya’s bedroom door and saying, “Hey, you wanna watch a movie?”

 

Movie night becomes a regular post-mission occurrence.

Maybe a couple months after the first movie night, Vanya is curled on Diego’s bed between Luther and Allison.  Diego’s perched on the edge, slouching a little so Allison can see over his shoulder. They have one bowl of grapes as snacks tonight, and right now it’s in Diego’s lap.  

Klaus and Ben are pressed close together on the floor in front of the bed.  Klaus is shaking. Everyone else is ignoring that fact, because what could they do about it, anyways?  As the picture continues -- something about a girl finding out she is actually a princess -- he relaxes slowly into Ben’s side.  Vanya watches the colors flickering over their faces and thinks,  _I like this._

The door opens abruptly.  Vanya flinches violently, her heart leaping into her throat.  Luther nudges her out of the way instinctively, putting his body between her and the door.  Diego clutches at his knives, Allison at her heart.

It’s not an attacker.  It’s worse.

“Children, this is unacceptable!” their father barks, glaring down his nose at them.  “Curfew is at 9:30 P.M.; there is to be no further activity other than sleeping or resting after that time.  Fun is restricted to thirty minutes between twelve and twelve-thirty on Sundays!”

Nobody moves.  Nobody meets his eyes.

“Number One,” their father snaps, and Luther hunches like making himself smaller will help him avoid their father’s ire.  “I expected better of you. All of you, to bed. Now.”

Luther gets to his feet first and all but slinks out of the room.  Allison follows, eyes down, and Vanya slides off the bed after her.

“Not you, Number Four,” their father’s voice cracks out, and Klaus’ eyes go wide with dread.

“Wait, Dad -- ” says Ben unexpectedly, shooting a glance at Klaus.

“You will cease these illicit activities at once,” their father demands.   _“Number Four.”_

Klaus picks himself up and stumbles after their father without looking at the rest of their siblings, who have all frozen.  

“Dad, we just got back from a mission.  Maybe Kl -- Number Four could wait for tomorrow night to do this training,” Luther suggests tentatively, and Vanya thinks it might work because he’s their father’s favorite, and if their father listened to any of them it was reliable Number One.

“Absolutely not, Number One,” their father says crisply over his shoulder, guiding Klaus away with one hand resting firmly on their brother’s shoulder.  “Bed. I should think that you have disobeyed me enough for one night.”

Vanya doesn’t sleep that night.

Klaus isn’t at breakfast, but their father is.  The meal is silent save the record in the background, because none of them dare even look up from their bowls.  At the conclusion of the meal, their father wipes his mouth with a napkin precisely and says, “Number Two, you will have individual training with me.  The rest of you will proceed to your lessons.”

Diego twitches.  It’s not quite a flinch, and he covers it up by reaching for his glass of water.

Diego isn’t at lunch that day.

Allison isn’t at dinner.

“Number Seven,” says their father at the breakfast table the next morning.  It’s just the two of them, sitting on opposite sides of the long dining table.  “Your siblings have a great responsibility. You must not distract them from their duty.”

“I understand,” says Vanya, and she eats her oatmeal as Mom smiles benignly at her from over her father’s shoulder and doesn’t look at the five empty places where her siblings should be sitting.  

Her father nods once, satisfied, and they lapse into silence once again.

 

Klaus, having disappeared first, is also the first to resurface.  On her way from one of the classrooms to the kitchen for a glass of water, Vanya hears a scuffling coming from the wine cellar, where the door hangs ajar.  She pushes the door open, and Klaus, sprawled on the floor with his eyes bleary and unfocused, moans, “Oh, God, not another one, please, _leave me alone.”_

“Klaus?” Vanya opens the door a little wider and steps forward tentatively.  Klaus scuttles backwards. An empty bottle tips as he knocks into it, rolling away to the far side of the aisle.  “Klaus, it’s me. Vanya.”

Klaus pauses.  “Vanya? Little Number Seven?”  Vanya lets the acidic tone roll off her, but feels the sting despite her best efforts.  He blinks at her, but his eyes don’t focus.  “Oh, fine, I guess,” he says, and his shoulders slump as he gropes for another bottle before noticing the one already in his hand.  He takes a long swig, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand when he finally comes up for air.

Vanya bites her lip.  “Uh. Maybe we can get you to your room,” she says.  She doesn’t want to think about how much trouble he’d be in if their father came in and saw him absolutely trashed.  

“Put me back in the little box where I belong,” Klaus agrees bitterly, and stumbles to his feet.  He sways.  Vanya steps forward quickly to catch him before he can fall, but he’s taller than her and his weight nearly topples them both.  

“Put that down,” she says of his bottle of wine.  He makes no move to do so, and she can’t make him, so she gives up and takes Klaus and his wine both upstairs.  

They come across Diego limping down the hall from the bathroom when they finally make it up the last flight of stairs.  There’s blood still streaked through his hair, he’s favoring both his right arm and leg; he looks darker and meaner and spits, “Jesus Christ,” when he sees them.

“Hey, bro,” slurs Klaus, his mouth twisting into a facsimile of a smile.  He waves the bottle at Diego.

Diego tracks the bottle with narrowed eyes and snatches it out of Klaus’ hand.  “Quit drinking this shit!”

“Y’gonna make me?” Klaus says.  It would look more defiant if he weren’t swaying where he stood.  Diego slaps him upside the head.  Klaus rears back and yowls like an offended cat.

“Did you make a mess downstairs?” Diego demands, shaking the bottle at Klaus.  It’s half full, and the wine inside sloshes dangerously up to the neck.

Klaus has lapsed into a surly silence, so when Diego turns his glare on Vanya, she offers a meek nod.  

“Damn you, goddamned juicehead,” hisses Diego, and stalks back towards the stairs with Klaus’ pilfered wine.

Vanya manages to make it to Klaus’ bed before he slides off her shoulder, collapsing headfirst into his blankets.  She doesn’t bother taking off his shoes, just heaves his feet up after him, and after a moment’s consideration, rolls him laboriously onto his side so he doesn’t choke if he vomits.  

“They won’t -- they won’t leave me alone,” Klaus says, his voice reedy and small and a far cry from its usual careless drawl.  His eyes are already half-closed, tired and haunted and desperate in one.

“They can’t hurt you,” Vanya says.  It’s small comfort, and her words ring empty.  But she doesn’t know what to say, so she leaves and goes down to the kitchen for her glass of water.

Allison reappears at dinner, her gaze vacant.  She twitches when Vanya clinks her knife against her plate a little too loudly and when Klaus drops his fork but otherwise doesn’t respond to anything.  Vanya shoots her covert concerned glances, but she doesn’t seem to notice. When Vanya is reading her textbook in the study after dinner, Allison never joins her.  After an hour, she closes her textbook and brings it back upstairs with her. She gets out her violin and practices  _Nocturne No. 20 in C# Minor_ by Chopin until curfew.  

Ben’s at breakfast; Luther shows up by lunch.  

Ben is jittery all morning and afternoon -- he taps his foot through three hours of lessons, can’t stop drumming his fingers through meals.  Diego brushes against him in passing and he nearly jumps out of his skin, jerking back and slamming his head into the wall.

Diego gives him a strange look and says, “What’s with you, man?” before seeming to catch himself and muttering, “Never mind,” and walking away.

Luther, somehow, is the opposite.  He stares as them all as if it’s been years since he saw them last, a strange mixture of relief and anxiety.  It unnerves Vanya to catch him looking; she drops her eyes and ducks her head and finds the nearest corner to hurry around whenever she encounters him.  

She can’t avoid him when he knocks on her door that night, twenty minutes past curfew.  She draws the blankets around her and sits up and tries to keep the nervousness out of her voice when she calls out, “Y-yeah?”

“Diego’s room,” answers Luther.  “Now-ish.” And then his footsteps -- the heaviest of the siblings’ -- moves on.  

Vanya had very much thought that after being caught by their father just three nights prior, they would no longer be having movie nights.  Vanya herself had escaped punishment, but surely the others weren’t eager to repeat whatever ordeals they had gone through.

She waits.  Luther’s footsteps pass by her door again.  Another set of footsteps, noticeably lighter, follows about a minute later.  

Vanya slips out of bed and joins her siblings in Diego’s room.

It very quickly becomes clear that this is not a movie night.  Diego’s possibly contraband television set is still sequestered away to wherever he hides things he doesn’t want found.  

Ben is huddled on Diego’s bed all the way in the corner, his knees drawn up under his chin; Klaus is sitting next to him, his head tilted back to rest against the wall, carefully not touching Ben.  Luther is on Ben’s other side, also not touching and not quite looming, just there -- sturdy and reassuring.  Diego is leaning against the window frame with a dark scowl as he glares down into the dimly illuminated courtyard.  Allison is reclined on his desk chair. Vanya takes in the room and perches hesitantly on the end of Diego’s bed.

There’s a beat where they all stare at each other while pretending they’re not while avoiding each others’ eyes.

Luther coughs and says, “I think we need the kind of relaxing we can get from watching movies and...stuff, after missions and tough training days.  Even though it’s against the rules.”

“All this stuff Dad puts us through,” Diego spits.  “It’s crap. It’s not training. He wants to see when we’ll break.”

“This is torture,” Allison agrees.  Her jaw is clenched now, her eyes fierce where they were vacant before.  “It needs to stop.”

From Luther’s face, it’s clear he didn’t think this was the direction their sibling meeting was going to go.  “It’s not torture,” he says helplessly. “He has to be tough, to prepare us for what’s out there.”

“We don’t need what he’s training us for.  We’ve been fighting crime since we were twelve,” Ben says.  “In three years, I’ve never actually had to -- ” he chokes, cutting himself off.  Vanya glances over, but he’s pressed his lips tightly together, and it’s clear he doesn’t intend to continue.

“I don’t want to keep doing this,” Klaus says, and it’s the most serious Vanya has ever seen him.  His eyes are bloodshot but clear.

Luther glances from face to face disbelievingly and says, “You can’t be serious.  Do you think Dad will take no for an answer?”

It goes deeper than that.  They might all resent their father, but he’s given them everything and made them into who they are today.  It’s more than a dependence for all of them, even Klaus and Diego. They’ve all been marching on his orders since the day they could walk, and in return he made sure they had everything they needed, that they grew up strong and wanted.  Going in the face of all that, spitting in his face and denying him what little he asks of them? Almost unthinkable.

Vanya just wants their father to love her.  She could finish growing up in this house, living comfortably with Mom and her studies and her violin, and having movie afternoons with her brothers and sister for thirty minutes between twelve and twelve-thirty every other Sunday.

But she looks at her siblings’ faces, sees how they’re all strained at the edges and haunted, thinks about how Ben locks himself in the bathroom for hours to scrub the blood off, how Diego spends freezing nights pounding his blades into cement over and over again, how Klaus will take any opportunity to dive into a bottle, how Allison sneaks smokes from the top floor window so she can pretend her hands aren’t shaking, how sometimes Luther runs and runs because the weight of their father’s expectations and all of their lives rest on his shoulders during missions.  And she thinks,  _this isn’t right,_ because her siblings might be extraordinary, but they’re still human.

Vanya is Number Seven, the ordinary one, not the leader -- that's Luther -- so it surprises no one more than herself when she blurts out, “Let's run away.”

**Author's Note:**

> This is set post-Five's disappearance and pre-Ben's death, so the siblings are in this place where they all still just want their dad to love them and they all love each other but they all also dislike each other.
> 
> There's no real bashing of any character that I can really make out but I'm probably biased. I wasn't quite sure how to write Pogo, so I just...didn't. 
> 
> This fic wormed its way into my head and thoroughly distracted me from everything else I was supposed to get done. Hopefully it'll leave me alone for a bit now.
> 
> Also I looked up beef stroganoff recipes while writing this and now I want some :(
> 
> I live for tua memes and also justin h min tweets keep up the good work fam


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